The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Sunday, January 13, 2019

Pretend refugees - Nadav Shragai

​by Nadav Shragai

The new campaign by former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor tackles the absurdity of the Palestinian refugee narrative by displaying the successful lives of nine descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 but who still identify as refugees.

Israel and the U.S. want the
U.N. to dismantle UNRWA, which perpetuates the refugee status of
Palestinians across the globe
Photo: AP

A few months ago, researchers Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf wrote in an article about their book "The War for Return"
that children in refugee camps run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) could recite by heart
their parents' and grandparents' stories about leaving Israel during and
after the 1948 War of Independence. Sometimes, it seemed they'd
experienced it themselves. The indoctrination in the camps was so
intensive that the children "described the homes that had been left down
to the smallest details, and could describe the color of the curtains,
the shape of the windows. The garden and the scent of the flowers."

Later, when interviewed for various
studies, the children admitted that if it hadn't been for the UNRWA
education, they might have lost their identity and assimilated into the
society that surrounded them.

Now the Abba Eban Institute for
International Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya is
"exposing" the decidedly non-refugee lives of many of these children who
grew up, established careers, acquired professions, and sometimes
became wealthy. The campaign, titled "Double Identity," is the
brainchild of institute director and former Israeli Ambassador to the
U.N. Ron Prosor and his team. It focuses on individuals from the second,
third, and fourth generation of the never-ending Palestinian
refugeedom.

The exhibit represents a new dimension of
the public diplomacy campaign Israel is waging against the U.N. The
institute wants to see UNRWA shut down by being merged with the Office
of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees (the U.N.'s agency for all
other refugees worldwide), under a clear mandate to eradicate
Palestinian refugeedom rather than preserve it for all eternity, as has
been done thus far.

The unique refugee mechanism the U.N.
created for the Palestinians has created 5.3 million refugees over the
course of seven decades, even though only some 700,000 Arabs left Israel
in 1948, most of whom are no longer alive. Research generally repeated
the narrative of Palestinian refugeedom, which passes from generation to
generation, with children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and
great-great-grandchildren now unwilling to give up their "right of
return." Now Prosor and his staff are launching a different campaign for
public opinion in the U.S., one that includes pictures and stages of
the lives of nine people that illustrate the absurdity of Palestinian
refugeehood.

All the material in the exhibit was
collected from open sources, generally texts that the nine people
featured wrote or published on social media or various Internet sites.

Three people represent the youngest
generation of "refugees" in the Double Identity campaign: Tareq Abu
Nahel, Hoda Daoud, and Batoul Bilali, all in their 20s. Their life
stories are distinguished by a lack of distinction. They aren't
different from other people their age who are living comfortably in the
West, and Prosor and his team chose them to model the face of
twenty-something Palestinian refugeedom precisely because it isn't clear
what aspects of their lives earn them refugee status.

Abu Nahel was born in the Gaza Strip and
now lives in Oslo, Norway, with his family. Daoud and Bilali were born
and live in Lebanon. Abu Nahel launched a successful career as a young
rapper, and some of his songs are about the Palestinian struggle. Daoud,
whose father moved from Gaza to Lebanon when he was 17, holds a degree
in mathematics and economics from the American University of Beirut. She
recently posted pictures of a successful adventure holiday she took to
Morocco.

Bilali, who earned a B.A. in business
administration, frequents the theater, art galleries, and her hobbies
include swimming, kayaking, and hiking. Her father, Nabil Bilali, owns
Original Dental, a thriving dental equipment supplier. Bilali dreams of
running a research center devoted to promoting a healthy lifestyle.

Iyad el-Baghdadi, 41, a native of Kuwait,
is a third-generation refugee and a noted author and human rights
activist who now lives with his family in Norway. His grandparents were
uprooted from Jaffa in 1948 and went to Egypt, along with Iyad's father,
Ismail, who was only a baby. Two decades later, the family moved to the
United Arab Emirates. Al-Baghdadi gained fame during the Arab Spring of
2011 when he penned a satirical essay titled "The Arab Tyrant's Manual"
that mocked and needled the Arab dictators whose regimes were being
shaken up. The essay was translated into 13 languages.

In the spring of 2014, el-Baghdadi was
arrested for his activity and writing, not given a trial, and deported
from the UAE. After a brief stay in Malaysia, he was given asylum in
Norway, where he is now working on a book about the Arab Spring. In his
writing and lectures, he represents himself as a "citizenshipless
Palestinian refugee from the Arab Emirates." According to the UNRWA
definition, el-Baghdadi and his children, who belong to the third and
fourth generation of Palestinian refugeedom, are counted as refugees and
entitled to aid from the organization.

Mona Hatoum, 67, was born in Lebanon and
now holds British citizenship. She is the daughter of parents who left
Haifa in 1948 and became refugees in Lebanon. Hatoum's father worked in
the British Embassy in Lebanon, making him and his family eligible for
British citizenship. In 1975, while the family was visiting London, the
Lebanese civil war broke out and they were forced to stay in Britain,
eventually making it their home.

Hatoum studied at the Bame Shaw School of
Art and the Slade School of Art and eventually won accolades for her
video work, performances, and installation. In 1995 she was nominated
for the prestigious Turner Prize. She now has work on display in
prominent museums across the globe and is represented by famous
galleries, including White Cube in London. Her work has also been
exhibited in Israel, and a few pieces are in the Israel Museum.

Although she was born in Lebanon, Hatoum
does not define herself as Lebanese since her family, like other
Palestinians who arrived in Lebanon in 1948, were not granted
citizenship and remained refugees. Based on the UNRWA criteria, Hatoum
is one of the 5.3 million Palestinian refugees who are demanding and
entitled to return to their homes within the borders of Israel, even
though in her case it is hard to imagine a starker contrast between her
comfortable lifestyle and the term "refugeedom."

Two other women who had stellar careers
while defined as refugees by UNRWA are actress Shukran Murtaja and media
personality Mayssoun Azzam.

Murtaja, 48, is a native of Saudi Arabia
and the daughter of parents from Gaza who moved to Syria, where she was
educated and became famous as an actor in films and TV series. Murtaja
graduated from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus, and
after she married a Syrian actor she was given Syrian citizenship and
lived a comfortable life there. Eight years ago, Murtaja visited the
Gaza Strip and met with her father's family and said she identified with
the suffering of the residents of Gaza.

Azzam, 45, is a native of Abu Dhabi. Her
parents fled Israel for Lebanon in 1948. Azzam is a television
broadcaster in Dubai who has worked for the Al-Arabiya news network
since 2003. She teaches media studies at the American University in
Dubai. Over the course of her career, she has interviewed PA President
Mahmoud Abbas; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair; and former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad. In 2011 she took part in an ad campaign for a coffee
company. She learned to ride horses and completed a B.A. in
communication at the Lebanese American University and an M.A. in
international politics at Birkbeck, University of London.

The last two people featured in the Double
Identity exhibit are Fatma Dabdus and Abdul Rahman Katanani. Dabdus,
born in the U.S., was five when her family moved to Lebanon. Today she
teaches at the school of medicine at the American University of Beirut
and says she enjoys swimming, reading, politics, and history. Dabdus,
like many others with similar life stories, claims Palestinian refugee
status despite the fact that she was born in the U.S., raised in
Lebanon, and her life is in no way reminiscent of the image of a
helpless refugee who needs international aid.

Katanani is a successful artist. His
grandparents left Yazur (now Azur), a tiny village near Jaffa, 71 years
ago and moved to Lebanon. Although he grew up in the Sabra refugee camp
in Beirut, he no longer lives the life of a refugee. He earned a B.F.A.
and an M.F.A. from the Lebanese University in Beirut, apprenticed in
France, and has won many important prizes for his work. His pieces,
which often reflect identification with Palestinian suffering and the
Palestinian struggle are on display all over the Arab world, as well as
in galleries in Munich and Paris. They fetch hefty prices.

Prosor underscores that Double Identity
aims to move the debate over UNRWA from the macro to the micro and show
who the Palestinians – who represent themselves or are portrayed by
others as refugees deserving of UNRWA assistance –really are.

"If the grandfathers and grandmothers of
these people and people like them were refugees from anywhere else in
the world, they would already have settled permanently and not be
entitled to transfer refugee status to their children," Prosor says.

"Because of the crooked way in which the
U.N. and UNRWA keep defining Palestinian refugeehood, these young people
can live regular, successful lives but keep calling themselves or are
being called 'refugees.'"

The Abba Eban Institute has discovered that
UNRWA spends an average of $250 per year on each of the 5.3 million
Palestinian refugees, compared to the average $60 dollars the U.N.
Refugee Agency on each of the 68 million other refugees worldwide.

UNRWA's employment rolls also point to
bloat. Some 10,000 people work for the U.N. Refugee Agency, while UNRWA –
which handles a number equivalent to 8% of the number of refugees in
the charge of the U.N. Refugee Agency – employs three times as many,
some 30,000.

"The U.N. won't merge UNRWA and the U.N.
Refugee Agency without heavy pressure on it to do so. The Double
Identity campaign and other public diplomacy on the issue of UNRWA and
the refugees … will help coalesce public opinion in support of the
pressure the U.S. and Israel are putting on the U.N. The goal is to end
this [UNRWA] scandal, which even now maintains refugee camps that have
turned into breeding grounds for hatred and terrorism against Israel,"
Prosor says.

Nadav ShragaiSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/01/11/pretend-refugees/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter